


Wingless

by Clementive



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Orphan Tenten (Naruto), Snippets, Team Dynamics, Team Gai - Freeform, Tenten (Naruto)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-14 14:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18053987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementive/pseuds/Clementive
Summary: Tenten threw her first kunai in the wilderness whispering her parents’ names, and giving up her own. [Tenten days 2019]





	1. Academy Student

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Tenten's birthday, everyone! The idea for Tenten days' prompts was to follow her across the different stages of her life. So, here we go; a bunch of snippets. :) Hope you enjoy it!

"Did you understand what I just told you, Tenten?" Lord Hokage said gently, his wrinkled face turned toward the window.

 

"Yes."

 

He followed her gaze, his hand trembling as he took his pipe out from his robes. Her face remained unmoved, lost to him. He exchanged a glance with his ANBU guard. They shifted uneasily. They had expected her to scream and cry. They had expected her hoarse and broken, carrying, dragging the pieces of herself as they explained the arrangements for the funeral. Her parents were chuunin, they served their village, they would dress in black, they said.

 

But she didn’t bulge.

 

She didn’t cry.

 

She craned her neck, ignoring them, still peering out the window where dusk crushed the last of the darkness. Birds chirped among the rustling leaves, none of them black. None of them bad omens.

 

She tested what he had called her on her tongue. _Orphan_. Vaguely, she knew it meant she was alone. Sighing, Lord Hokage straightened his back and whispered a brief order to his guard. The moment they approached the door, still throwing back worried glances at her, she opened her mouth to ask if now, she had more chance at becoming like Lady Tsunade, now that her parents were dead, now that she was clan less.

 

She closed her mouth. The door closed softly.

 

She was alone.

 

Still sitting, her legs kicked in a constant rhythm like flapping wings. Like rotten ones that formed beneath scabs on her back.

 

Nameless.

 

Clan less.

 

Wingless.

 

When they were gone, she slipped out of the house like her parents were still alive, crouching and silent. Like it was still a game. She reached the edge of the forest, the spot where the fence had a gaping hole, and she looked over her shoulder breathlessly. The wind gently pulled her loose hair back. Her parents’ bedroom remained plunged in the darkness, devoid of shadows, devoid of life.

 

She threw one of her father’s kunai in the wilderness, calling an indistinct name. Her throat constricted, her windpipe crushed, she shuddered. _Clan less nameless wingless voiceless_. Her new mantra. Face turned away from the forest, she threw a second one, calling another name, her eyes wide and desperate, staring hard at her parents’ bedroom.

 

The day rose. Birds sang. Light pierced through the curtains, wildly stabbing at the empty room.

 

Her arm fell back to her side.

 

All that was left was her own name, and she wasn’t sure she still wanted it. _Clan less nameless wingless voiceless. Orphan. Orphan. Orphan._

 

Tenten.

 

She would be just Tenten from now on.

 

( _Years later, when she evokes this memory, she only remembers the endless lines engraved on Lord Hokage’s face and the curve of her hand as she released the first kunai in the forest. The memory unfolds in mute colourless images. She wonders about the name she had abandoned then. She wonders about belonging to no one._

 

_And the birds._

 

_She wonders about the birds which never stopped flying and singing when she had just fallen. The next thought is dangerous, always prowling the corners of her mind, always menacing to fall from a stranger’s lips. It moulds so easily with her first memories of death. She struggles, uneasy, she fights tirelessly. She can’t think of him now._

 

_The boy who once looked at the birds._ )

 


	2. Genin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys enjoy this! :)

Their first day as genin, Neji refused to spar with Tenten, a teammate without a name, without a clan, without a bloodline. He had briefly sparred with Lee before Gai-sensei took over. Tenten remained alone, sharpening her kunai, her back uncomfortable and stiff against the trunk of a tree.

 

Above her, the blinding blue sky moved relentlessly across clouds and faraway birds.

 

Through her eyelashes, Tenten watched Neji count them, the birds, veins pulsing around his eyes. He sat in a meditation pose, turning his body every so often, glancing up without his byakugan, then re-activitating it, counting, recounting, and shifting constantly. She had never seen anyone else look at the birds before. She wanted to ask him if he counted their wings, but his eyes tore through the sky. Blank. Angry. Searching. And she remained invisible. And she hated him. He hung on this name, greedily, uttering his clan name, chained and dependant and enslaved.

 

How dared he watch the birds?

 

Tenten sighed, beaming, and finally stood up to go home. She waved excitedly at her sensei and her other teammate. To Neji, she said nothing.

 

"Why don’t you have a name?" he asked as she brushed by him.

 

Smoothly, Neji stood up, and fell in step with her.

 

"Why don’t you have a dream?" Tenten replied in a sing-song voice.

 

"Answer me. I have the right to know what kind of teammates I’ve got."

 

"So do I, dreamless boy..."

 

Tenten twisted a kunai in her hand, smiling serenely, bouncing instead of walking. Out of the corner of her eyes, she watched his face twisted in an ugly expression. It amused her, how he followed her still, his brows furrowed, impatience pulling his thin lips into a snarl. Recklessly, she started pointing at her house to shock him. Her small empty creaking house without a banner, without a compound.

 

"Are you a bastard?"

 

Tenten froze, a kunai now resting on the tip of the finger pointed in the general direction of her house. He looked back at her coldly, triumphant, but his smirk slid at the sight of her face. Her face peeled off, naked and savage where bone had fused with steel; it gripped his guts in an iron fist, hammering through him.

 

He blinked.

 

Swiftly, she threw the kunai next to his head.

 

Neji flinched when he heard the thud of the kunai stabbing the tree behind him. He hadn’t seen the blade, the steel never reflecting the sun as if she had leaked darkness along with her throw. The string attached to it pressed against his cheek, and he watched as the muscles in her arm stiffened, the corner of her mouth twitching. _She stopped herself from killing me_ , Neji realized breathlessly.

 

Neji had observed her, bored, leaning against the tree, restlessly shouting out encouragements to Lee. He had dismissed her immediately; her chakra reserves were ordinary, her fighting stance, undisciplined, even more so than Lee.

 

She had fooled him. Him, a genius. Him, with a name, a clan, a bloodline.

 

Neji activated his byakugan again. Tenten pulled at her string, instantly, and he crouched down to avoid the kunai. His palms grew cold, grazing the ground. She caught it easily and he knew it then; she had wanted him to see the kunai with his byakugan.

 

"Don’t ever insult my parents’ memory again," Tenten said in the same voice she used to praise Lee, bubbly, happy, and she beamed.

 

And she smiled wider and twisted the kunai once more carelessly around her finger.

 

He couldn’t see _**her**_ anymore.

 

"Hn."

 

"See yah!"

 

Tenten walked away, and he couldn’t move, crouching, defeated, fear still pulsing uncomfortably inside him.

 

The expression Neji had seen on her face, he had seen only once before; on his mother’s face, as she watched Lord Hiashi over her husband’s grave.

 

( _Standing over his grave, Tenten finally admits to Neji that she resents Lee and him. She always has. She resents how their rivalry shaped them into better fighters. She resents how none of them ever looked at her as a potential rival._

 

_She trained Neji._

 

_She trained Lee._

 

_But no one trained her. She learned alone._

 

_For years, she had watched Neji count the birds, and he never asked her why she jumped, why her body always leaped toward the sky when she fought or why she always watched the birds with him._

 

_She resents them so much, she yells now, the woman of steel who has been forged in death._

 

 _She hates them, she spits, because the team she had adopted never adopted her back. And now, they can’t because he is gone._ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it’s canon that Neji didn’t respect women and ninja without bloodline limit as a young genin, so I have this headcanon where Tenten almost kills him. Huehuehue
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated! :D


	3. Chuunin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place during their second chuunin exam in Suna (the anime episodes). Enjoy! :)

She mirrored their smile.

 

She mirrored their excitement.

 

"We are now chuunin," Tenten smiled, ‘and it’s all because of you’ she added silently, watching the back of Lee and Neji’s heads as they bowed to Lady Tsunade and Lord Kazekage.

 

Chuunin, a new rank, a new uniform, like when her parents died. Two chuunin and one jounin, also just like their team.

 

Tenten stood as she always did, now, a step behind her teammates, relying too heavily on them. Dependent. She thought she had given up dependence when she gave up her name.

 

Tenten exited the room first, Lee’s excited, run-on speech about youth barely reaching her. She slipped out of the Kazekage’s tower, unnoticed. She ran in the empty streets, avoiding echoes of laughter, steps. Senseless irritating sounds of bonding and love and honour. She ran faster until she reached the desert. Panting, she watched it turn golden, its edge burnt, crispy hues of pink gleaming across grains of sand. She lightly touched her scroll strapped to her back, a token of reassurance.

 

Neji found her in the darkness, later, the desert dressed in pearly moonlight.

 

"You’re not joining us," he stated, cocking his head on the side as his eyes moved across her face.

 

"I don’t feel like restraining a drunk Lee," she replied, distractedly, haunted by her parents. "Tell them I’m sharpening my kunai or something."

 

"Tenten..." he said her name slowly, always pausing, always expecting her to fill the gap and justify the blank besides her name.

 

He never asked again about her name, but she knew he was waiting for her to tell him.

 

He was constantly waiting for her now.

 

"The birds are different here. Look, Neji!" Tenten pointed at the darkened sky, a fleeting shadow, and he stood too close, hesitant, and his gaze bound to her.

 

"Maybe we should talk about..." Neji said softly, but he stopped himself like so many times before. He shook his head and she relaxed, until he opened his mouth again. This time he didn’t stop. "Let’s talk about us."

 

She stood as ice int he middle of the desert, refusing to look at him.

 

"Wings. Let’s always talk about wings," Tenten replied numbly.

 

"I thought I was."

 

He grabbed her hand, she sliced through his soul: "No."

 

The echo of her booming voice shattered back against her, billowing through dunes and sand, and she froze again. She panted. She waited for him to say something, her fingers touching her lips. For once, she waited for him.

 

She closed her eyes, her fingers curling around a kunai in the silence that stretched, uncomfortably brittle.

 

"I’m free of destiny, you’re the one who’s still trapped," he whispered calmly, and turned to leave.

 

Her hand, then her whole body shook. She knew she couldn’t throw the kunai. She couldn’t watch it disappear, not as his name still tumbled weakly out of her mouth. Dependent on him, as always.

 

The world spun, moonlight and sand, but she still wouldn’t tell him yes.

 

A team of two chuunin and one jounin... she knew how this tale ended. Two corpses lost in the desert, one survivor. The jounin.

 

And one wingless little girl.

 

( _That night,_ s _he was terrified of death, Tenten admits to his ghost when she visits Suna for her shop. She stands on a dune, and she talks to the desert. It’s the moon, it’s his eyes, that trapped her there, in the dusk._

 

_They are her only mirages._

 

_For the rest, Tenten remains voiceless._

 

_She can’t explain to his ghost why she didn’t give him her heart then. She can’t explain why she needed more than that, more than his softened eyes tentatively searching hers._

 

_She can’t explain how for her, destiny was him becoming jounin while Lee and her were only promoted to chuunin. She refuses to explain to his demanding, harassing ghost that her destiny was never about her._

 

_Destiny was Sakura becoming Lady Tsunade’s discipline, then surpassing her._

 

_Destiny was Ino, Kiba, Shikamaru, Chouji, Hinata, and Naruto all surpassing their parents, and leading the village to a new era of peace._

 

_Destiny didn’t even acknowledge her. She was bred for war._

 

_The pieces of her heart throb, alien, misfits in her chest, as the full moon gleamed more savagely above her head. She weakly admits that she should have been the one to die. Tenten shudders, but she doesn’t stop, her anger endless, her grief bottomless._

 

_He should be the one going on without her._ )

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On this very "light" note, hope you enjoyed it. :P As always, feedback is welcome :)


	4. Gaara rescue arc

Tenten inhaled sharply in the restless darkness.

 

Neji whispered her name, relentlessly, above the crackling of the fire.

 

Every time he did, her shoulders tensed, pulling the covers tighter around her, as she pretended she was falling deeper and deeper in a dreamless sleep. Not sunk in by deadly courant. Not drowned in icy foaming waters.

 

The reflection of the camp fire rolled on her cheeks, enhancing their curves, drawing reddish shadows where her eyelashes met skin. Yet, nothing had melted the cutting ice inside her.

 

She was weak.

 

"Talk to me. Please," Neji said and his shadow stretched over her, ready to catch her again.

 

Tenten growled deep in her throat, rolling to her side to face away from him. But the feeling of him lingered on her, his weight, his fingers brushing the skin of her waist as he caught her, saved her.

 

She shifted uncomfortably and he thought of water and drowning.

 

Kisame and his water prisons swirled in his mind and Neji reached again for her vitals, a finger to the wrist, in the crook of her neck, brushing her dark hair aside.

 

"I’m fine, for the last time," Tenten hissed, a cutting edge, shrugging off his hand.

 

Little by little, he had learnt to fit in the cracks of her, inhabit her gestures and habits to the point she barely noticed him anymore. He was always there, part of her life, part of her.

 

"I couldn’t..." Neji whispered back, and his hand dropped to the small of her back briefly; he needed to feel her solid and warm and alive. "We wouldn’t want to carry on without you," he coughed, his jaw stiffening. "Lee and I, we couldn’t."

 

"Oh god, Neji, I’m not dead," Tenten replied coldly.

 

"You neared your limit."

 

"So, I just need to train more," she replied in the childish voice she knew he hated, but it rang savage, sharp, unleashed. "Night night, now!"

 

"Tenten..." he sighed in her ear.

 

"Stop saying my name like that," she snapped tartly, half-rising from her futon, and they both stilled, holding their breath as they stared at each other.

 

Tenten paled. Neji’s eyes flickered to Lee and Gai-sensei’s bodies sprawled out of their futon. Their chest heaved with soft snores, unperturbed. Neji licked his dry lips, turning back toward Tenten, but she had already curled back in her covers, inching away from him.

 

He laid back on his back. There were times it was easier to watch the sky than reach for her.

 

"I was worried. I kept thinking..." Neji struggled to find the right words, his fingers rubbing his marked forehead. "I don’t even know your name," he added in a lower voice when she didn’t answer. "I don’t even know what to put on your gravestone, or... if you want to be close to your parents."

 

_(‘Do you hate your parents? Is that why-’_

 

‘ _Yes,’ she snapped like a mutinous child before he could complete his sentence. ‘No,’ she added a second later with a snarl, and her eyes gleamed, steel and ice._

 

_Soulless.)_

 

Tenten shut her eyes, her fists clenching, and his weight on her mind increased, nearly crushing her, demanding things from her she simply couldn’t offer. Love, and hatred... their edges blurred, rotten, rooted in one another, whenever she thought of them. Whenever she thought of him.

 

"You can’t pretend it’s not here." Neji tapped a finger over her heart, his arm circling her waist, pressing her against his chest.

 

"I don’t understand everything about your name, but I know... I can see how much you crave to belong," he said his lips ghosting over her neck. "You could take my name if you would like."

 

"No, I couldn’t."

 

Tenten didn’t have a quiet mind like him. Hers was loud, wet, constantly swirling; dark and crimson. She was bones and scars and the entrapped weapons in her blood, while his mind was pure order.

 

No one had saved _**her**_ from her darkness.

 

No one had ever called _**her**_ a genius. Least of all him. So, why did he pretend her scars, her grief had faded? Why did he touch her as if he was the one holding the pieces of her together? Why did he act like she needed him? Or his name? Or the freedom and peace Naruto had given him?

 

She didn’t want to be saved.

 

Her mind had always been a battlefield.

 

She was only free when she fought.

 

Her fingers closed around his wrist and tore it away from her heart. She patted it off, interlocking their fingers together, her mind still soaked in her weakness. She could never entirely crush the apprehension that when he touched, embraced her, he was putting his arms around somebody else. Somebody, anybody that wasn’t nameless.

 

"Let’s sleep," she exhaled.

 

( _Lifelessly, Tenten drops his ring on the battlefield when Lee closes his eyes._

 

_She kicks at the ground, covering it with dust and dry blood. She wills layers of pain and anger to bury it, the way she has already buried her heart. She wills it to sink, deeper and deeper, as Lee and Gai-sensei unknowingly step on it._

 

_She doesn’t flinch._

 

_Later, she will roar, but for now, she hides in plain sight. When she comforts Lee over his corpse, she buries her memories of him. When she holds Gai-sensei’s hand later, she smiles and jokes childishly with Kakashi-sensei._

 

_No one notices how her movements, her laughter twist, uneven, like beaten steel._

 

_Hours later, when she does roar, she reminds him that even to him, she was often invisible._

 

_Even if his fingers had drawn and redrawn the scars on her back, peeling off layers of her, of them, he had never truly understood her. Her lack of name. Her lack of wings. Her lack of voice._

 

_Her violence._

 

 _And now, his death has freed her a little more, because she doesn’t need to pretend anymore; she is a bad omen._ )

 


	5. Fourth Shinobi War

Tenten retreated, marked and haunted, under a grey scorched sky empty of birds.

 

She waited, masking her chakra, and waited, and waited to see if someone would find her. She waited on a muddied ground stabbed by weapons, dried by blood, a battlefield abandoned a week ago. Beyond the edge of the skeletal forest, her friends, her teachers, her village still fought, his body still lying at their feet. Alone, she roared. The sound broke inside her chest, winded, then it ripped through the sky, increasing, thundering.

 

She roared like a dragon had she had wings.

 

She didn’t cry.

 

She roared.

 

"Is this why you fought fate? To end up..." Her shoulders raised, tensed, and she violently shook her head.

 

She couldn’t say it. Dead. Dead. _DEAD_. There was no release. The more she roared, the bigger it grew inside her. It deformed her face, her body shaking, each limb pulling at each other. His name. His name ravaged her.

 

She lifted her head up, panting, her kunai already in her hand. She had never denied death.

 

After all, where was up for the wingless, chained creatures? Where was up heaven and hell, for those like him and her? The forgotten soldiers of a gruesome world. The ones with blank darkened eyes.

 

She counted the stars, the fluttering branches, the corpses surrounding her. All that was wingless.

 

She should have known from the beginning, it would end like this. She had told him too many times, it would end like this: them, not together.

 

And she couldn’t destroy the earth in his name like Sakura.

 

She couldn’t slice through minds in his name like Ino.

 

She couldn’t see beyond his corpse in his name like Hinata.

 

She was just Tenten. No heart. No future. Just weapons.

 

Carefully, Tenten weighed the kunai in her trembling hand. She closed her eyes when she threw it. She hoped he would step back behind her and stop her. She hoped, hoped he would throw it back.

 

No one returned the kunai.

 

This was her destiny, as clear as his.

 

She called out his name for the last time.

 

( _Tenten punches a wall when Naruto and Hinata tell her they have named their son after Neji._

 

_She doesn’t roar._

 

_She doesn’t cry._

 

_She destroys._

 

_She pulls out her hand from the wall, cracked plaster, wallpaper violently ripping, falling at her feet. Her fist clenches over white powder and beading blood. The pain in her chest crushes, dulls the one expanding along her arm._

 

_Her friends react like falling dominoes, dragging each other; Lee shudders, his happiness evaporated, resting dead on his parted lips while Sakura looks away immediately. They piled up, her friends, the dominoes, stunned and silent; Ino presses her hand to her mouth, wide-eyed, and Naruto places his arm in front of Hinata holding their son._

 

_Tenten walks silently past them, white dust covering her, dressing her as his ghost. Her anger surged, boiling and devastating, bile choking her, as she approaches the graveyard._

 

_Her hand doesn’t close around a kunai; the one bearing his name is already gone. He is gone. He is gone. She repeats it softly. She blames them all, but she mostly blames herself. They all came back from the war. Everyone, but him._

 

_She doesn’t say anything over his grave, gutted, empty. She lacks everything, she always has. Clan. Parents. Voice. Wings. Wings. Wings._

 

_And him. He is a missing piece too, the boy who once watched the birds. She can’t accept that his name now belongs to someone else._

 

_She doesn’t say anything when Hinata joins her, timidity and warmth._

 

_She doesn’t say anything when Temari steps next to her and holds her hand, briskness and protectiveness._

 

_She doesn’t say anything when Ino sets fresh flowers on his tomb, grace and strength._

 

_Everything that she has ever said came too late._

 

‘ _I’ll marry you, but I won’t take your name’_

 

‘ _I love you, but sometimes I hate you.’_

 

‘ _Sometimes, I just can’t help it... I hate myself more than I love you.’_ )

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter just broke my heart all over again. I had never written anything Canon compliant before or set in the Naruto universe because of Neji’s death. This is all to say that I’m a hot mess right now. *hugs you all*


	6. Instructor

The wooden puppets rose from the ground, eerily, standing bulky and wobbly above smoke as they took their first steps. The ground grumbled and sank beneath them. Strings snapped, whipped back against the branches.

 

Tenten grinned back at Gai-sensei.

 

"They are beautiful, aren’t they?" she asked with a content sigh, the empty training grounds shaking with each movement of the puppets. "Imagine them dimming the genin in the forest of death. I added a few things," she paused moving her fingers expertly until their chest opened in unison, revealing gleaming weapons and more strings. "I’m not done yet with the bomb tags though... But just picture it: smoke, running genin... weapons... more weapons." She clasped her hands together, her eyes wide and her expression childish, and the puppets mirrored the gesture behind her. "So, what do you think?"

 

His smile slipped, his thumb-up bending back over his fist.

 

He hesitated.

 

Gai barely recognized her, the warmth behind her smile familiar, but the rest of her, dark and unstable, inscrutable. She shifted, glided, with delays and violence and restraint. Like one of her puppets. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He thought of Kakashi, he thought of his own loss, the ghosts of his legs, his career; everything the war had stolen from him.

 

"Gai-sensei?"

 

Nonchalantly, Tenten waved the puppets off and took a step toward him. She stared him, wide smile, the corner of her eyes wrinkled. He opened his mouth again, but stopped himself as she came nearer. The sun behind her was blinding and her dark eyes glistened reflecting nothing.

 

And all the strings lying around her, connecting her to her puppets, seemed to be pulling at her too, arranging her posture, her features.

 

"You know how youthful I think you are, my little flower!" Gai’s voice boomed, and he tried to reach her, a smile, a glance.

 

She turned away from him.

 

"They won’t kill the kids, no worries," Tenten said her fists on her hips, her head cocked on the side as she squinted back at her creations. "If they stay focused, they can avoid them easily. Well, maybe not easily-easily... But that’s the point of the Chuunin exam, isn’t it?"

 

The wooden beasts creaked and screeched smoothly turning back towards them when she whipped back her hand. They carved fleeting shadows around her eyes, her mouth, despite how much she beamed at him.

 

"Tenten..." Gai-sensei frowned, and she pouted, whirling back toward her puppets. Again and again, escaping him, ignoring his feeble attempts.

 

It was too late, her body shrilled. You can’t be a sensei to me now that he’s dead and Lee has moved on and I’m the only one who remains.

 

"Naruto tells me you refused to lead a genin team..."

 

Her back still to him, Tenten made quick hand seals and the puppets vanished in thin smoke.

 

"I’m a weapon mistress. I own a weapon shop. I just don’t have time..." She shrugged.

 

"I recommended you for it," Gai said louder, straightening his back; he could see her adding more and more distance between them, burying him the same way she had buried her parents. Without a glance back. Without a name.

 

"I know, you’ve always believed in me."

 

Somehow, her smile was genuine, but her words rang hollow. His hand tensed, clammy, and his grip slipped around the wheel of his chair. He imagined himself reaching for her shoulder, standing on his legs.

 

"I think..." Gai said slowly, but with enthusiasm. "I think it’d do you good to have a team of your own. You travel a lot... It’s time to take more youthful responsibilities."

 

"Yeah, well, it’s out of youth that I’m an instructor now," Tenten said in a sing-song voice, again, her expression was perfect, her tone controlled, and he wished he could pretend nothing lurked behind it.

 

He leaned back against his chair, tired, drained, and guilt devoured his heart.

 

"You need some humanity in your life," Gai-sensei said softly and again, he saw the polished dark eyes of Kakashi in her. "Maybe, it’s my fault, we should have had this conversation years ago... After Neji died, maybe, but I lost things too..." He pointed at his legs.

 

"What are you saying, Gai-sensei? You said, you liked my puppets! No take-backs!"

 

"I’m saying, I took you in my team for a reason," he said more firmly, ignoring her pout and sly smile.

 

Tenten said nothing, impenetrable, but her head titled back slightly. Sky bound.

 

"And I promised myself I would take care of you when your parents died," Gai continued. "I was with them... Lord Third must have told you."

 

"Take care of me, huh?" she smiled again, and Gai wondered if she rehearsed it, her smile, her warmth, while so much of her remained hidden, buried. "I never liked the thought of depending on someone," she said carelessly, but her face had grown stiff, placid, her eyes sharp and merciless.

 

"I promised them before they died," he lied because he saw a little girl in her hunched shoulders, a little girl angry at the world.

 

Paling, Gai rolled his chair toward her while she rolled back her scrolls and rearranged her weapons.

 

"I tried," Gai added desperately and her gestures quickened, "but it never seemed like you needed anything. You seemed strong-willed and perfectly happy, but now..."

 

"Now, what?" she asked coldly, impatiently pushing her bangs out of her eyes.

 

"Now, you seem... abandoned." Gai-sensei locked eyes with her, and vaguely Tenten saw a flash of grey spiky hair, disappearing between trees.

 

She took a step back from Gai-sensei.

 

When she looked down, the kunai shook in her hand, reflecting uneven sun-rays, her reflection distorted.

 

"I have nothing to teach," she said, aware of Kakashi, hiding between the trees, aware that Gai-sensei needed to hear something else.

 

If he hadn’t spoken of her parents, she would have told him. She would have told him that she was whole, body and soul. For him. For his legacy.

 

She would have told him that the remaining ones hadn’t drifted apart, visited too often by the dead.

 

Dead legs.

 

Dead rival.

 

Dead lover.

 

Dead parents.

 

( _She doesn’t visit them, she visits him._

 

_Out of habit, out of loss._

 

_As a child, she has passed by the gate of the graveyard, never entering. What would she say to them, a nameless wingless daughter? After the war, she has sat by Neji’s tomb and look at theirs, rooted where his ashes were, refusing to acknowledge theirs. She has picked at the grass next to Neji, rested on the ground, she has talked to him, she has mourned him._

 

_She has never truly understood why him, but not them. Looking in the eyes of the jounin who has survived, the jounin who has brought back her parents’ bodies, she has seen herself as a child. She has seen herself throw her first kunai muttering their names, hoping they would call back to her._

 

_"_ _You abandoned me," she sneers over Neji’s tomb because she can’t walk to theirs. She has too much bellowing grief and anger, and she sinks onto the ground, gripping at the grass and his grave. Her nails bent uncomfortably and broke over the stone. Her eyes burning, her mouth snarling, she briskly slapped the dead flowers away._

 

_"I couldn’t stay your daughter. You abandoned me," she chokes, tumbles over the words, and she cries for the first time. Loud and devastated, her whole body torn, inanimate, Gai-sensei’s lie still ringing in her ears._

 

_She has never forgiven them._ )

 


	7. Shopkeeper

The bell above the door chimes sharply, once, and Tenten stills.

 

Naruto sways, recoils, a sinking shadow, in the doorway of her shop. He rubs the back of his head, his bright eyes shifting around him without truly seeing the weapons gleaming on every surface.

 

Tenten slowly flips the book she is reading on the counter. She doesn’t look up immediately, her breath entrapped, jabbing the back of her throat. Her slim fingers refuse to let go of the book, stiffening and trembling. If she lets go, she will need to stare back at him. She will have to talk to him.

 

But she is inhabited, eclipsed by a name she never chose for herself; _Neji Hyuuga’s widow_ , _Neji Hyuuga’s fiancé_ , _the sad shopkeeper who still mourns Neji Hyuuga_.

 

And Naruto is here for Neji. Not for her.

 

When Naruto reaches the counter, she finally looks up, worn to the bones, and she slides the book farther away.

 

"Hey, Tenten, do you have a moment?"

 

Naruto hums to himself, his eyes still darting in all directions.

 

"I figured you may come here... So, I’ve got the goods," Tenten replies with a withered smile.

 

From under the counter, she pulls out a bottle of sake and two glasses. Abruptly, she uncorks the bottle, feeling the weight of Naruto’s eyes on her.

 

"You heard, huh?"

 

Tenten nods stiffly filling their glasses.

 

"The whole village is talking about it."

 

"Are you mad?" Naruto asks too loudly, his jaw clenched, his eyes searching hers.

 

"Why would I be?" Tenten asks lightly.

 

Naruto blinks, his mouth parted, and she sees the fight inside him; it spreads him thin and corners him, vulnerable and trapped, with his greatest regrets. His son, alone, on a swing. His daughter, alone, lying on her stomach and drawing. His wife, alone, waiting for him at night.

 

_Loneliness_. Neji would have seen it.

 

_Guilt_. Neji would have acknowledged it.

 

She ignores them both, the silence between them dragging, smothering them in Neji’s absence.

 

"I feel..." Naruto says finally, uncomfortable, twitching, "ashamed and hurt. Mostly hurt, I guess." He shook his head, his fists clenching to his side as he stared at the ground. "No... I don’t know what I feel, actually," he says quietly, his mind reeling, his words pressed tightly together, too loud, too confused. "I didn’t know about you two, being engaged and all, when I named Boruto... I’d have asked otherwise..."

 

Tenten gulps down the sake and gestures for him to do the same. Her body is on fire, half ruins and spewing hatred, but always, _always_ about him, his name. A ghost that branded her beyond his grave, branding iron pressed against a rotten heart.

 

"Naruto," Tenten wipes and her mouth with the back of her hand and nods, light-headed, toward the glass he still hasn’t touched.

 

"Neji would have never cheated," Naruto exhales sharply.

 

And all of him is suddenly extinguished, shadows folding into his skin, his eyes, invading him violently. Only his eyes and her weapons glisten in the descending darkness.

 

"No, he wouldn’t have," Tenten says briskly, and there’s a ghost nested around her wedding finger, pressing her to keep talking even if it’s not about her. Even it’s through her, and Neji can never speak back.

 

"But Neji did make mistakes," Tenten sighs, brows furrowed, as she refills her glass. "He regretted the chuunin exams more than you can ever imagine. He regretted his bond with Hinata. He looked up to you. I suppose that’s why he gave up his life for you two." Her hand closes around the glass, stiff, icy, and the other one moves blindly under the counter until it touches sharp steel.

 

"I wish he hadn’t done that," Naruto sighs.

 

"Me too."

 

Startled, Naruto looks back at her, and she doesn’t look away, her mouth a snarl, her face, ravaged, shrouded in the darkness that has finally fallen outside. She brings the glass back to her lips, and the alcohol pounds through her, wildly gripping her insides.

 

She slams the glass back on the counter.

 

"You’re very very frank," Naruto says.

 

"As sharp as a kunai," Tenten smiles, empty, and a corner of her mind is hoarsely screaming her name. Has she ever stopped screaming it, she wonders? Has she ever been anything more than the echo of a name when since Boruto was born and her friends have moved on?

 

The corner of her mouth twitching, Tenten props her chin up, and refills her glass.

 

"I should get home..." Awkwardly, Naruto gestures toward the door, taking a step back from her.

 

"Before you do..." Tenten looks over his shoulder into the darkening blue sky.

 

One. Two. Three. She stops herself, letting the last bird go. A silent tribute.

 

"Forgiveness," she says the word slowly, bitterly. "It wasn’t you. It wasn’t Hinata, it was forgiveness that saved him. Your son needed to be punished, but now, he also needs to be forgiven."

 

"Thanks for saying that," Naruto lights up once more, the surrounding weapons, gleaming dully, framing his smile, his happiness.

 

A second chance.

 

He has always believed in second chances.

 

‘And it was my lack of forgiveness that doomed me,’ she adds silently when he is gone.

 

_Clan less nameless wingless voiceless orphan soulless._

 

Alone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, I have this headcanon about Tenten's last name... :3
> 
> Please take the time to let me know what you thought. :)


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